Starting this month: Webex customers can preview real-time translations from English into 100+ languages
Webex AI-powered, real-time translation drives more inclusive collaboration through virtual meeting experiences that are 10x better than in person interactions
Webex innovation paving the way for real-time translation beyond English
SAN JOSE, CA – March 2, 2021 – Eliminating language barriers is a key step to enabling a truly global, hybrid workforce. To help, today Cisco announced the availability (in preview beginning this month) of its real-time translation feature while also dramatically expanding the language library from 10+ to more than 100 languages, ranging from Armenian to Zulu. As part of the all new Webex, organizations can provide employees with inclusive and seamless collaboration experiences, which is essential to supporting the needs of a workforce that is more globally dispersed than ever before.
Users can create their own personalized Webex meeting experience by quickly and easily self-selecting the language of their choice from the most commonly used languages, such as Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish, as well as more localized languages such as Danish, Hindi, Malay, Turkish and Vietnamese. The personalized language experience provides a path through one of the major hurdles in global business – the language barrier. Now users can engage more fully in meetings, translating from English to 100+ other languages, enabling teams to communicate more effectively with each other, and opening new opportunities for businesses to build a more inclusive, global workforce.
For businesses, there’s a talent and cost benefit. The feature enables businesses to focus on finding the best talent regardless of wherever they call home or their native language. And a recent report from Metrigy on intelligent virtual assistants found that nearly 24% of participants have meetings that include non-English native speakers and of these, more than half have been using third-party services to translate meetings into other languages (incurring an average cost of $172 per meeting). Integrating intelligent virtual meeting assistants with language translation capabilities significantly reduces or even eliminates this cost entirely.
“The inclusive features of Webex help create a level playing field for users regardless of factors like language or geography. Enabling global Real-Time Translations is another step toward powering an Inclusive Future, and an important component of driving better communication and collaboration across teams.” said Jeetu Patel, SVP and GM Security and Applications, Cisco. “AI technologies play an integral role in delivering the seamless collaboration, smart hybrid work and intelligent customer experiences that Cisco is known to deliver.”
Webex has a rich history of helping employees innovate and remain productive wherever they are. Since the pandemic, Webex has not only continued to help businesses thrive, it has also been an integral platform for governments to continue to lead remotely, doctors to meet with patients safely, and educators to teach students at a distance. It’s clear that the future of work will involve a combination of remote and on-site interactions, known as hybrid-work. Cisco has a clear vision of how technology can help customers realize that future today and create a more inclusive world for all, by enabling a Webex experience that is 10x better than in-person while at the same time making in-person interactions 10x better as well.
Availability
The expanded Real-Time Translation feature will be available in Webex as a preview starting this month and will be orderable and generally available in May.
Twitter has opened its audio chat room, Spaces, to Android users, the company tweeted Tuesday.
Twitter introduced a limited version of the Clubhouse competitor on iOS in January. While any users of Twitter’s iOS app can join and listen to Spaces, only a few can host them at the moment. Twitter said it was giving Spaces to “a very small feedback group” to start, with women and people from other marginalized groups given priority. Now, users of Twitter’s Android app can join and listen to Spaces as well.
Android folks, our beta is growing! starting today you will be able to join and talk in any Space. SOON you’ll be able to create your own but we’re still working out some things. keep your out for live Spaces above your home tl
Leading software and cloud industry expert joins rapidly growing CPaaS provider to accelerate company growth for customers and partners
SAN MATEO, CA – – IntelePeer, a leading Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) provider, today announced that Chris Botting has been named as Chief Product Officer (CPO). A hands-on leader with more than 30 years of experience growing software and cloud businesses at some of the world’s largest organizations, he will help accelerate IntelePeer’s growth through CPaaS and customer experience innovation.
“Chris comes to IntelePeer with a wealth of industry knowledge, and we couldn’t be more excited to have him join our team,” says IntelePeer CEO Frank Fawzi. “His customer-centric approach to product development will pay dividends as we continue to create value for our customers by making it easier to leverage automation, AI and analytics in omni-channel customer experiences.”
Prior to joining IntelePeer, he held executive positions at leading organizations such as Cisco Systems, where he served as General Manager for its Customer Care and Contact Center Technology Group. He also served as Chief Operating Officer at Selligent, implementing strategies to grow annual revenue while transforming the organization into a strategically aligned, data-driven, Agile operation. Most recently, Botting was Founder and CEO of a SaaS/mobile application start-up. A dedicated mentor and coach to employees and college students, Botting holds an MBA from Duke University, a Master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Grove City College in Pennsylvania.
“I cannot think of a better opportunity to help take IntelePeer to the next level,” says Botting. “I look forward to leading the team in driving successful customer-facing products and bringing together the key points that reinforce differentiation in IntelePeer’s omni-channel automation, ease of product implementation and use.”
About IntelePeer
IntelePeer powers the new customer experience. Our Atmosphere® CPaaS enables companies to communicate better – driving more revenue, improving their customer experience, and making better business decisions – leveraging omni-channel Automation & Self-Service, AI, and Analytics, all delivered through a single easy-to-use cloud platform that works seamlessly with your existing business solutions. For more information visit: www.intelepeer.com.
Microsoft Mesh enables shared virtual experiences. | Image: Microsoft
Last week, Microsoft’s Alex Kipman, the inventor of Kinect and HoloLens, appeared in my living room to hand me jellyfish and sharks. That might sound like I had a weird dream, but it was a meeting made possible through Microsoft’s new Mesh platform. I donned a HoloLens 2 headset, joined a virtual meeting room, and Kipman immediately appeared next to my coffee table, ready to demonstrate Microsoft’s vision for the future of VR and AR — or as Microsoft calls it, mixed reality.
It all felt like a Microsoft Teams meeting set in the future.
Mesh is a collaborative platform that allows anyone to have shared virtual experiences on a variety of devices. “This has been the dream for mixed reality, the idea from the very beginning,” explains...
Microsoft’s new Outlook calendar board view. | Image: Microsoft
Microsoft is making its first significant change to the Outlook calendar view in years. A new Outlook calendar board view is coming soon to Outlook for the web, and it works a lot like Trello. It’s a new dynamic view that will let you organize meetings alongside tasks, notes, goals, links, files, and more.
It works much like Trello, where you can add new cards of information to help you organize your calendar and meetings. Files can sit alongside this view or even simple notes and goals to help with organization. It’s essentially an ever-expanding board that tries to centralize everything that goes into keeping your calendar clean and up to date.
Image: Microsoft
The new Outlook calendar board looks a lot like...
Scan documents directly into Mail, Finder, and other Mac apps. | Image: Apple
The iPhone’s Notes app has a powerful document scanning feature built right into it, and today I learned that this scanner can be controlled directly from a paired Mac in a variety of apps. It’s an incredibly useful tip for Mac users as it cuts out the awkward middle steps of having to transfer it from phone to computer, or grabbing it from the Mac’s Notes app after it syncs. Shoutout to TikTok account @keyboardshortcuts for bringing it to my attention.
Besides Notes, the iPhone’s scanner can be accessed from a number of different Mac apps, including the Finder, Mail, Messages, and Pages 7.2 and later. To use it, control-click (or right-click) in the window you want to scan the document into, select “Import from iPhone or iPad,” and then...
Google is adding a smattering of new features to Google Workspace today, including new tools for categorizing your focus time in Google Calendar and Chat, better ways to join Google Meet videoconferences with multiple devices, and a version of its office suite for frontline workers. It’s also taking Google Assistant for Workspace out of beta and making it generally available.
The company is trying to categorize these features as part of a new push for what it calls “collaboration equity.” For Google, it’s a high-minded way of explaining the tools it’s trying to create so people working from home are not put at a disadvantage compared to people working from an office (when people are allowed back into offices, that is).
Google Workspace, the company’s productivity platform you’ll forever refer to as G Suite (or even “Google Docs”), is launching a large update today that touches everything from your calendar to Google Meet and how you can use Workspace with Google Assistant.
Image Credits: Google
Indeed, the highlight here is probably that you can now use Assistant in combination with Google Workspace, allowing you to check your work calendar or send a message to your colleagues. Until now, this feature was available in beta and even after it goes live, your company’s admins will have to turn on the “Search and Assistant” service. And this is a bit of a slow rollout, too, with this capability now being generally available on mobile but still in beta for smart speakers and displays like Google’s own Nest Hub. Still, it’s been a long time coming, given that Google promised these features a very long time ago now.
The other new feature that will directly influence your day-to-day work is support for recurring out-of-office entries and segmentable working hours, as well as a new event type, Focus Time, to help you minimize distractions. Focus Time is a bit cleverer than the three-hour blocks of time you may block off on your calendar anyway in that it limits notifications during those event windows. Google is also launching a new analytics feature that tells you how much time you spend (waste) in meetings. This isn’t quite as fully featured (and potentially creepy) as Microsoft’s Productivity Score, since it only displays how much time you spend in meetings, but it’s a nice overview of how you spend your days (though you know that already). None of this data is shared with your managers.
For when you go back to an office, Google is also adding location indicators to Workspace so you can share when you will be working from there and when you’ll be working from home.
And talking about meetings, since most of these remain online for the time being, Google is adding a few new features that now allow those of you who use their Google Nest Hub Max to host meetings at home and to set up a laptop as their own second-screen experience. What’s far more important, though, is that when you join a meeting on mobile, Google will now implement a picture-in-picture mode so you can be in that Meet meeting on your phone and still browse the web, Gmail and get important work done during that brainstorming session.
Mobile support for background replace is also coming, as well as the addition of Q&As and polls on mobile. Currently, you can only blur your background on mobile.
Image Credits: Google
For frontline workers, Google is adding something it calls Google Workspace Frontline, with new features for this group of users, and it is also making it easier for users to build custom AppSheet apps from Google Sheets and Drive, “so that frontline workers can digitize and streamline their work, whether it’s collecting data in the field, reporting safety risks, or managing customer requests.”
‘We think this is going to fundamentally create equal opportunities for people around the world,’ Cisco‘s Security and Applications leader Jeetu Patel says on the latest Webex translation enhancements.
Klara and the Sun, a new novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. | Courtesy of Knopf
Klara and the Sun is Ishiguro’s first novel since his 2017 Nobel Prize win. It’s quiet and tender.
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro’s new book and his first novel since he won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2017, is a spare and tender exploration of what it means to be made redundant, to exist in a world that believes itself to have moved past a need for you. Which is perhaps why it makes sense that this new book feels so reminiscent of Never Let Me Go, the novel Ishiguro wrote in 2005 that is arguably his most beloved work. Why shouldn’t it look a little like a great novelist returning to one of his favorite party tricks? Have we truly advanced past the need for that trick?
The Klara of Klara and the Sun is an AF, or Artificial Friend. She’s a solar-powered robot who’s been designed specifically to be the perfect friend — intelligent, empathetic, wanting only to protect and serve — for a lonely child.
And most wealthy children in this near-future world are lonely because most of them don’t go to school in person. They attend virtual classes through devices Klara calls “oblongs” instead. (Ishiguro finished this novel before the pandemic rendered online schools so common in our own timeline.) In-person school is now obsolete, and so are peer friendships.
So when Klara locks eyes with 14-year-old Josie, and Josie says, “That’s the AF I’ve been looking for,” it’s mutual love at first sight. Klara goes happily home with Josie, ready to be a source of unconditional love in Josie’s isolated and sickly life.
Because Josie is ill. And Josie’s mother, who treats Klara with an icy politeness that occasionally shades into desperation, seems to have an unusual relationship with her daughter’s illness. She seems to feel guilty about it, but also proud, in some strange and confusing way that Klara, in her sweet naivety, cannot quite parse.
Never Let Me Go readers will recognize this narrative trick of Ishiguro’s. In that novel, narrator Kathy H. is a likable and intelligent child who is plainly living in a world of sinister secrets, but who does not have the scope of reference to make it clear to the reader immediately just what those secrets are. She experiences them as normal, and thus feels no particular need to explain. And Klara, who knows no family besides Josie’s, experiences Josie’s family as normal, too. She continues placidly on with her duties of loving Josie, even as dark misgivings swirl around the edge of the narrative.
But Klara is intelligent enough to know that she herself might be made redundant. Just as in-person school was, and just as the engineering jobs that went to AIs were. (Josie’s father is a former engineer. He says that he was “substituted” out of a job, but cheerily remarks that he’s better off as he is now, living in a gang with “fascistic” tendencies.) Klara, after all, is a machine, and planned obsolescence is part of a machine’s life.
From the windows of the store where she lives before she meets Josie, she can see other, older AFs walking around with their children, and she sees the way they flinch away from the sight of her in the store window display.
“They were afraid because we were new models,” Klara concludes, “and they feared that before long their children would decide it was time to have them be thrown away, to be replaced by AFs like us.” The possibility of being thrown away, replaced, made redundant, is ever-present in this novel — for friendships, for jobs, for Klara, and even, terrifyingly, for Josie herself.
Klara and the Sun is not, however, likely to make Never Let Me Go redundant. It’s a technically lovely novel, with Klara’s forebodings expressing themselves less as fear than as a subdued melancholy that sweeps underneath the surface of the narrative in gentle waves. But this book lacks the deep wells of feeling that lurked in Never Let Me Go: I’ve never once made it through Never Let Me Go without sobbing, but Klara and the Sun didn’t make me so much as tear up. This sweet-natured novel is, like its narrator, just a little too cool and mechanical to inspire such emotional outpouring.
But Ishiguro has, by this stage in his career, earned the right to return to his favorite themes and narratives for a closer look. There are not so many good books in the world that a new Ishiguro will ever be obsolete.
Combined cloud communications platform creates unmatched growth opportunity for service providers in $48 billion Unified Communications as a Service market
Pleasant Grove, UT –March 1, 2021 – Alianza, Inc., the full stack cloud communications platform for service providers, announced today the closing of its acquisition of CounterPath Corporation, a Vancouver-based provider of softphones, cloud meetings, and mobile UCaaS solutions. The combination with CounterPath strengthens Alianza’s ability to deliver the best end-to-end cloud communications platform for service providers. Service providers are now better positioned to win in the rapidly growing and evolving communications market.
Highlights of the combination include:
Service providers now have access to modern cloud voice, video conferencing, and text messaging for businesses, in addition to cost-effective residential phone services from a single provider.
Accelerates service providers’ ability to innovate and keep pace with the ever-changing business cloud communications market while seamlessly integrating with back-office and customer experience workflows.
Unmatched expertise in cloud technology, unified communications, and mobile applications extends R&D capabilities for service providers seeking to elevate their go to market strategies.
“We are on a mission to help service providers grow market presence and revenue with a one-stop-shop to cloud-source all their communications offerings,” said Brian Beutler, CEO, and Founder of Alianza. “By adding CounterPath products, Alianza’s customers are able to future-proof their solutions and compete with vertical market players by adding modern messaging, video conferencing, and collaboration tools.”
“Together, Alianza and CounterPath will change the cloud communications landscape,” commented Todd Carothers, Chief Revenue Officer of CounterPath. “The companies share a commitment to empowering service providers with innovative communication products that have a meaningful impact on the bottom line and doing so with a focus on simplicity and high quality.”
“Alianza’s acquisition of CounterPath reflects the growing importance of video meetings and team messaging to the enterprise communications and collaboration landscape,” says Irwin Lazar, President and Principal Analyst at Metrigy. “Today, more than 60% of companies are now bundling those features into their calling licenses to better support remote work and customer engagement. Alianza’s broad offering enables service providers to bundle additional value-add capabilities with their existing network and telephony offerings.”
CounterPath brings award-winning softphones and collaboration tools to Alianza communications service providers
Communications service providers are looking to grow and add services that digitally transform their offerings to meet customer expectations for consolidated calling, messaging, meetings, and contact center solutions. With the rapid rise and need for remote work communications solutions and video conferencing, the ability to create user-intuitive solutions and rapidly deploy these products with cloud flexibility is a significant benefit to service providers.
By combining CounterPath award-winning Bria® softphones and Stretto services with the Alianza Cloud Communications Platform, the company will deliver industry-leading voice, video, messaging, and cloud meeting solutions from a single cloud-based technology provider.
Alianza platform enables CounterPath service providers, OEMs and value-added resellers
Communications service providers (CSPs) and managed service providers (MSPs) are no longer held back by obsolete and complex on-premises solutions. The combined solution provides existing CounterPath customers with the flexibility of a full turnkey platform or standalone cloud communications products to solve specific market requirements. By utilizing Alianza communications products and platform services, customers can go to market quickly with easy-to-use, easy-to-manage products, while focusing on their core business of customer delivery and experience.
Executive Team and Offices
Alianza CEO, Brian Beutler, welcomes CounterPath CRO, Todd Carothers, to the Alianza executive team as EVP of Corporate Strategy, joining Justin Cooper, EVP Customer Success & Product, Kevin Dundon, EVP Sales & Marketing, and Clint Peck, CTO.
The Alianza headquarters remains in Pleasant Grove, Utah. With the acquisition, Alianza will maintain a significant Vancouver, British Columbia presence.
About Alianza
Alianza connects people with a full stack cloud communications platform that empowers service providers to rapidly create and deploy high-value communications offerings. With exceptional quality and always-on availability, service providers leverage our product suite to innovate and address the evolving market demands of business and residential customers with an easy to manage, easy to consume, and highly profitable platform. Cloud communication products include voice, video conferencing, and text messaging for businesses, residential phone service, and standalone UC softphones. Our team of experts has a passion for transforming communications delivery and ensuring first-rate customer experiences. Alianza serves more than 600 satisfied customers across 60 countries. Learn more about our solutions at alianza.com.
Celebrating CallTower was the first VoIP solution provider to offer an integrated Office 365 Native Microsoft Teams, eliminating the need to sift through unnecessary emails and enhancing productivity
South Jordan, UT – March 1, 2021 –CallTower, a leading provider of cloud-based, enterprise-class Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions for growing organizations worldwide, has been recognized as one of the Top 10 VoIP Solution Providers of 2021 by Enterprise Networking Magazine.A distinguished panel of experts, professionals, and technology leaders, including board members of Enterprise Networking Magazine, has decided and included CallTower in the list of “Top 10 VoIP Solution Providers 2021.”
“We are glad to announce CallTower as one of the Top 10 VoIP Solution Providers – 2021,” said Lena Headey, Managing Editor of Enterprise Networking Magazine. “This recognition is a testament to great technology, innovative solution, and world class service that CallTower is providing to its customer.”
CallTower was the first VoIP solution provider to offer an integrated Office 365 Native Microsoft Teams, eliminating the need to sift through unnecessary emails and enhancing productivity. CallTower enhances clients’ strategic and operational capabilities by integrating VoIP service, mobile applications, email hosting, unified messaging, instant messaging, audio, web and video conferencing, collaboration tools, contact center, cloud services and global networks solutions into one reliable platform.
“Our solutions offer everything in UCaaS and CCaaS with the highest redundant voice quality and collaboration services – all integrated with productivity tools and network support which empowers our customers to have choices in how they communicate with their customers and vendors in a global business landscape,” says CallTower’s Chief Revenue Officer, William Rubio.
Enterprise Networking —is a technology magazine that insights about the latest enterprise networking solutions in the industry. The magazine acts as an excellent platform for high-level executives, business leaders, and professionals to share their opinions and challenges faced in the industry.
Since its inception in 2002, CallTower has become a leading provider of cloud-based, enterprise-class Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) solutions for growing organizations worldwide. CallTower provides, integrates, and supports industry-leading, cloud-based, UCaaS and CCaaS solutions, including Native Microsoft® Teams Direct Routing, Microsoft® Office 365, Cisco® HCS, Cisco® Webex, Enterprise Hosted Skype for Business, CT Cloud Voice, CT Cloud Boost, CT Cloud Meeting powered by Zoom and Cloud Contact Center for business customers.
By Dave Michels As managers and supervisors struggle to monitor remote employee productivity and efficiency, UCaaS vendors are responding with built-in and standalone monitoring and productivity products.
YouTube has suspended Rudy Giuliani’s YouTube channel for the second time this year for making false claims of fraud in the 2020 US presidential election and has issued a strike against his channel. It’s Giulani’s second strike within 90 days, according to Bloomberg, meaning that Giuliani cannot upload videos for two weeks. In a statement, YouTube also cited Giulani’s promotion of nicotine, which is against the company’s rules.
“We have clear Community Guidelines that govern what videos may stay on YouTube, which we enforce consistently, regardless of speaker,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement to The Verge. “We removed content from the Rudy W. Giuliani channel for violating our sale of regulated goods policy, which prohibits...
Agreement for wireless 911 services marks key milestone in DISH’s network deployment
ISLANDIA, NY and LITTLETON, CO – Feb. 25, 2021 – Intrado Corporation (“Intrado”), and DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) (“DISH”) today announced an agreement for 911 call routing to support DISH’s cloud-native 5G wireless service, the first of its kind in the U.S.
Successfully routing and delivering a 911 call is a foundational and vital requirement for any wireless communication network. Selecting Intrado for end-to-end 911 call delivery is an important milestone in DISH’s buildout of a truly unique 5G network, while helping public safety advance with the latest communications technologies.
“We selected Intrado based on their longstanding reputation as a trusted provider of world class 911 solutions for both the telecommunications and public safety industries,” said Jeff McSchooler, DISH executive vice president of wireless network operations. “As the newest nationwide wireless carrier in the U.S., we want to ensure our customers have access to the most reliable emergency response infrastructure available.”
“Innovation that is based on sound knowledge, vast experience, and superior attention to detail ensures continued delivery of advanced 911 solutions,” said Jeff Robertson, president of Intrado’s Life & Safety division. “Working with a progressive partner such as DISH allows Intrado to continue to accelerate our pace of innovation to serve the expanding needs for 911 service in the 5G space.”
Intrado provides over 60% of all 911 call routing in the United States and Canada. Over 250 Originating Services Providers (OSPs) depend on Intrado to simplify 911 location data management and 911 call routing, while satisfying compliance requirements efficiently and cost-effectively. For more information about Intrado’s Life & Safety continuum of products that support the safety of the public, businesses, and education institutions, visit www.intrado.com/en/life-safety.
About DISH
DISH Network Corporation is a connectivity company. Since 1980, it has served as a disruptive force, driving innovation and value on behalf of consumers. Through its subsidiaries, the company provides television entertainment and award-winning technology to millions of customers with its satellite DISH TV and streaming SLING TV services. In 2020, the company became a nationwide U.S. wireless carrier through the acquisition of Boost Mobile. DISH continues to innovate in wireless, building the nation’s first cloud-native, Open RAN-based 5G broadband network. DISH Network Corporation (NASDAQ: DISH) is a Fortune 250 company.
About Intrado Corporation
Intrado Corporation is an innovative, cloud-based, global technology partner to clients around the world. Our solutions connect people and organizations at the right time and in the right ways, making those mission-critical connections more relevant, engaging and actionable – turning Information to Insight.
Intrado has sales and/or operations in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and South America. Intrado is controlled by affiliates of certain funds managed by Apollo Global Management, Inc. (NYSE: APO). For more information, please call 1-800-841-9000 or visit www.intrado.com.
Certified for Microsoft Teams the Savi 7300 Office Series ensures maximum security and privacy for the most critical calls
SANTA CRUZ, CA – Feb. 23, 2021 – Poly (NYSE: PLT) today introduced the Savi 7300 Office Series, the latest addition in the company’s lineup of popular Savi wireless headsets. The Savi 7300 Office Series, designed with enhanced DECT security and Poly’s best-in-class audio, delivers confidence that you’re getting the highest degree of privacy and call clarity for all conversations, even in shared spaces like call centers and customer service hubs.
“Privacy and security continue to be two of the most requested features that global leaders, especially those in financial services, government, health care and contact centers look for in today’s headsets for their workforces,” said John Lamarque, vice president and general manager, voice collaboration, Poly. “At Poly, we address these needs head-on with pro-grade wireless headsets on which our customers can rely.”
Greater Conversation Privacy and Security
The Savi 7300 Office Series offers Poly’s Acoustic Fence microphone technology so workers will always be heard, but never overheard. Built with the latest DECT wireless technology, the Savi 7300 Office Series ensures that even the strictest internal security requirements for wireless headsets are met with ease. The Savi 7300 Office Series is designed to the highest level of DECT Security Step C , and is further enhanced with 256-bit AES encryption, the same level of maximum protection used for military communications.
Superior Density Performance
The Savi 7300 Office Series’ top-notch use of the DECT spectrum provides 2x better density compared to other DECT headsets and allows more people to work in the same area without being overheard. The Savi 7300 Office Series is ideal for industries who regularly deal with sensitive information in highly dense call center areas, like finance and healthcare, where secure, superior performance and connectivity are an essential part of day-to-day operations, no matter how many others might be nearby when taking a call.
Microsoft Teams Open Office Certification
Thanks to its Acoustic Fence technology, Savi 7300 Office Series has been awarded the Microsoft Teams Open Office certification, certifying that the headset only picks up the voice of the headset user, but not the sound of others in an open space. In addition to the Teams certification, the Teams version of the Savi 7300 Office Series comes with a dedicated Teams button so it’s easy to start a meeting and get notifications, and still sound great.
“The need for security and privacy has never been a more critical piece of what businesses demand from devices today,” said Mohamed Alaa Saayed, ICT Industry Director & Fellow – Connected Work, Frost & Sullivan. “Organizations are busier than ever and workplaces like call centers are often ground zero for some of the most important conversations – from healthcare, to finance, to customer services – making the privacy and reliability of Savi 7300 Office Series that much more essential to keeping day-to-day operations seamless and secure.”
The Savi 7300 Office Series is available today on Poly.com and with authorized resellers worldwide. For more information on pricing and availability, please visit: Savi 7300 Office Series
About Poly Poly (NYSE: PLT) creates premium audio and video products so you can have your best meeting — anywhere, anytime, every time. Our headsets, video and audio-conferencing products, desk phones, analytics software and services are beautifully designed and engineered to connect people with incredible clarity. They’re pro-grade, easy to use and work seamlessly with all the best video and audio conferencing services. With Poly (Plantronics, Inc. – formerly Plantronics and Polycom), you’ll do more than just show up, you’ll stand out. For more information visit www.Poly.com.
Product design plays a major role in unified communications. Often conversations around UC focus on the underlying technology, which of course is extremely important. However, product design is not only a key factor in UC but it optimises the UCaaS experience and technology. “You can have the coolest technology, biggest feature-sets, and slickest marketing but if people can’t understand how to use your products, or the if the level of effort involved in learning how to use them is too high, your business is not headed for success,” says 2600Hz Lead Product Designer, Josh Sanders.
“You miss out on large-scale user-adoption because your products are difficult to use. If people can’t use your products, you don’t make money—your business can’t grow. Essentially, product design is an integration of different methodologies and tools to create intuitive and useful solutions that solve for experience deficiencies”
Customers need to feel like they can easily engage with products and that features are robust and flexible. Otherwise, they will search for other options and products that better serves their needs. This is where product design becomes a key factor for business success. Good product design makes it easier to identify and understand an organisation’s target demographic’s needs and allows for better products/services that meet those needs.
The 2600Hz Approach to Product design
Product design is a fairly broad term and covers a range of disciplines and touchpoints throughout the product creation process. The levels from conception to deployments can become quite detailed, but from a high level they include:
Research & Discovery
Identify existing market/experience gaps or missed potential through industry and competitor analysis
Understand target demographics and their needs/goals
Identify current customer pain points through user research
Define & Ideate
Define needs/goals of users
Define the problems being solved for, goals, strategy, success metrics etc. for the product/service
Brainstorm as many ideas and potential solutions as possible that attempt to solve the problem(s) being designed for
Innovative and wild ideas encouraged in this initial phase
Prototype & Validation
Sift through all the early options/ideas and establish the options that have the most merit
Build mockups/prototypes of these potential solutions and gather feedback on the proposed idea using questionnaires or surveys, focus groups, user testing sessions, A/B testing, analytics, etc.
Iterate and continue testing to ensure that users and their needs continue to be met
Build, Test, Launch
– After ideas gain validation through testing, feedback, and approval from any stakeholders, it’s time to develop the solution as a product that customers can use
– Once the product has been developed, it needs to be tested to ensure that it works properly and that the experience will lead to the intended positive outcomes. This typically is done through internal QA but can also come in the form of private early access, alpha, and beta release strategies which help businesses gather important user feedback early in a product’s lifecycle
Iterate
Product design is cyclical in nature. Digital products are never done. There is almost always room for improvement within digital experiences and interfaces. Even if you think you have the perfect product, you’ll want to add new features to keep customers engaged and satisfied. Perhaps customers end up using your products in new or unintended/unforeseen ways, and your product needs to adapt to provide the experience your users want. Once a product is shipped, and in users’ hands, the design process restarts with the Research & Discovery phase to continuously improve and scale the product.
Thoughtful Design With the User in Mind
Service delivery and implementation are also highly important factors because they directly relate to how the product performs. If delivery systems are slow or fail, or code is full of bugs and prone to performance issues, these things create a negative customer perception of that product and company. “I consider the term ‘product design’ to be all-encompassing of both the back-end and front-end portions of digital products,” continues Sanders. “Support also plays a significant factor in the decisions product designers make. Product designers aim to create intuitive and elegant experiences. In other words, to design products that have as little impact as possible on incoming support channels.” Producing enablement material such as documentation and user guides can improve product interaction to some degree. However, a customer will inevitably call in for support at some point. As a result, they too play an integral role in informing how products are designed since support teams are one of the first touchpoints for customers to provide feedback.
What’s on the Horizon for Product Design?
Developing advancements in enterprise communications present some exciting possibilities for UCaaS product design. There is rapid integration of virtual and augmented reality that will reimagine how products are designed and the overall digital experience. While these are relatively new technology applications in this space, product designers will need to start considering use cases for their organisations. Likewise, voice command and conversational UI patterns are currently more embedded in our daily lives with Siri, Alexa, and voice-controlled appliances. It will be interesting to see the impact on UCaaS products and the cross-over these will have on business communications.
Microsoft announced ventures into financial services, manufacturing, nonprofit and retail clouds. But it isn't the first — or the last — to venture into industry-specific clouds.
Sales agents can now manage customer conversations directly from Salesforce for increased efficiency and productivity
BELMONT, CA – – RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG), a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact center solutions, today announced the release of in-app calling for Salesforce. The new feature enables sales agents to make, transfer, and control phone calls directly from Salesforce, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency, and empowering sales agents to drive improved customer engagement.
With in-app calling, sales associates can easily control and manage all customer calls without ever leaving their browser. Users can select their preferred caller ID number, organize multiple calls as separate tabs on the browser, and manage incoming and outgoing calls across devices without having to download any additional software.
“Today’s modern workforce needs the ability to communicate from anywhere using their preferred channels of choice in order to stay connected and efficient,” said Will Moxley, chief product officer at RingCentral. “Our in-app calling for Salesforce brings the capabilities of RingCentral to customer phone conversations directly within a browser, eliminating the need to switch between different apps. Our integration with Salesforce builds on our vision of providing an open platform, where users are empowered to access RingCentral’s cloud-based communications capabilities from within their applications of choice for optimal productivity across their organization.”
The capabilities are built with WebRTC technology and are the latest advancements in the growing list of features of the RingCentral for Salesforce integration that now includes:
In-app calling: Now using WebRTC technology, users can leverage RingCentral calling capabilities like call controls, inbound and outbound calls without ever navigating away from Salesforce. Users can also switch active calls between different RingCentral endpoints.
High Velocity Sales (HVS): By powering the telephony side of a sales cadence, sales reps have the ability to “click-to-call” right from their work queue for added convenience.
Intelligent performance reporting: Users can view a complete dashboard of a team’s performance. Now, users can edit and customize the RingCentral Analytics data as a native Salesforce report through RingCentral’s Cloud Phone Report.
Click-to-call: Users can place calls from within Salesforce by clicking on any phone number, saving time and improving call efficiency.
Instant screen pop-up: Incoming calls trigger screen pop ups with a 360° view of the caller, enabling quality interactions.
Call logs: With advanced features such as offline call logging and multi-call log option, agents can address their most important tasks first.
Effortless meeting scheduling: Seamlessly schedule RingCentral Video meetings from Salesforce.
Integration with the Salesforce app: Reach out to customers on the fly by calling or texting right from Account, Contact, or Lead tabs.
Work-from-anywhere access: Connect on both Windows® and Mac® devices, using any popular browser.
Interface flexibility: Users canwork the way they prefer, in Salesforce Classic or Salesforce Lightning UI.
Sales teams are using RingCentral for Salesforce to improve business continuity, automate tedious tasks, and easily access call history information needed to deliver personalized customer experiences. RingCentral customer Buffalo Americas is a global provider of networking, storage and multimedia solutions for the home and small business environments as well as for system builders and integrators. With in-app calling for Salesforce, Buffalo Americas has been able to easily train their remote sales teams to call customers directly from within their Salesforce browser for fast and efficient call management.
“RingCentral for Salesforce has made our salesforce more productive, and is incredibly simple to deploy and use,” said Ben DeLaurier, Director of Customer Support, Buffalo Americas. “In-app calling allows all of my Salesforce users to have full calling capabilities right from within the RingCentral for Salesforce app. In addition, training users has become simpler and faster. This has been a great help with all of my users, especially in light of a now-distributed workforce.”
RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG) is a leading provider of business cloud communications and contact center solutions based on its powerful Message Video Phone (MVP) platform. More flexible and cost effective than legacy on-premise PBX and video conferencing systems that it replaces, RingCentral empowers modern mobile and distributed workforces to communicate, collaborate, and connect via any mode, any device, and any location. RingCentral offers three key products in its portfolio including RingCentral Office® , a Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platform including team messaging, video meetings, and a cloud phone system; Glip ® the company’s free video meetings solution with team messaging that enables Smart Video Meetings; and RingCentral cloud Contact Center solutions. RingCentral’s open platform integrates with leading third party business applications and enables customers to easily customize business workflows. RingCentral is headquartered in Belmont, California, and has offices around the world.
Zoom has previously supported AI-generated closed captions for paid accounts. | Image: Zoom
Zoom plans to roll out support for automatic closed captioning to free accounts this fall as part of its efforts to make the service more accessible, the company has announced. If you’re a free account holder who needs access to the feature before then, Zoom is allowing users to manually request access to the Live Transcription feature via a Google Form linked to in its announcement.
Automatic transcriptions aren’t an entirely new Zoom feature. The service has previously offered AI-powered live transcription for all its paid accounts. Otherwise, meeting hosts have had to manually add their own captions, or use a third-party service. But now the feature will become available to the millions of people that rely on Zoom’s services for...
Nerf maker Hasbro has heard you loud and clear, Adam Savages of the world: you want to be able to shoot foam projectiles for days, without carrying around a belt full of magazines or constantly stooping down to reload.
Today, the company’s announcing Nerf Hyper, a new line of blasters that not only shoots harder (up to 110 feet per second) than any stock blaster but also features the company’s fastest reloads yet, thanks to a smaller foam projectile that takes up so little space, you can fit 40 of them inside a pistol-sized blaster. That’s unheard of in Nerf. You can clip on (or carry around) 50 or 100 round canisters to quickly top them up, much like a paintball gun.
Coinbase has publicly filed paperwork to list its stock on the NASDAQ exchange, a huge step forward in the first major public offering for a cryptocurrency company. Coinbase’s S-1 was published on Thursday morning, after being confidentially submitted to the SEC in December.
In an attached letter to investors, founder Brian Armstrong presented cryptocurrency as an equalizing force in financial markets — and Coinbase as the company at the forefront of that change.
“If the world economy ran on a common set of standards... the world would be a more fair and free place”
“The current financial system is rife with high fees, unequal access, and barriers to innovation,” the letter reads. “If the world economy ran on a common set of standards...
Ever since LastPass announced that it was tweaking its free tier to only allow a single category of device — mobile or computer — there’s been a lot of interest in finding alternatives among LastPass users. Luckily, once you do find an alternative, it’s pretty easy to pull your data from LastPass and upload it to another password manager.
What follows are instructions on how to download your LastPass data, and where to find instructions from several popular password managers that will help you upload that data to their services.
Export your LastPass data
LastPass allows you to export your data as a CSV or an XML file. If you’re planning to move that data to another service, then CSV is the far better choice. Since CSV stands for...
services with the Alianza Cloud Communications Platform, the company will deliver industry-leading voice, video, messaging, and cloud meeting solutions from a single cloud-based technology provider.
